On my last day of teaching Environmental Studies, I posed a question to my students. I explained that for some time in my childhood, my father worked in the airline industry. “What does this have to do with the environment?” I asked. Sadly, even after an entire semester, few if any of my students could make the connection. Air transportation is one of the most polluting industries. Depending on the type of car you use and the amount you use it, one to two flights can generate the same amount of carbon emissions as a whole year of driving. From the consumption of fossil fuels, to the toxic substances utilized or emitted such as jet fuel and de-icing fluid, to all of the disposable products and packages within the plane and the airport, to so much more...

May 02, 2018

The status quo, in all its various forms, is dominated by incentives that strengthen the centralization of wealth and power.

As longtime readers know, my work aims to 1) explain why the status quo -- the socio-economic-political system we inhabit -- is unsustainable, divisive, and doomed to collapse under its own weight and 2) sketch out an alternative Mode of Production/way of living that is sustainable, consumes far less resources while providing for the needs of the human populace -- not just for our material daily bread but for positive social roles, purpose, hope, meaning and opportunity, needs that are by and large ignored or marginalized in the current system.

One cognitive/emotional roadblock I encounter is the nearly universal assumption that there are only two systems: the State (government) or the Market (free trade/ free enterprise). This divide plays out politically as the Right (capitalism, favoring markets) and the Left (socialism, favoring the state). Everything from Communism to Libertarianism can be placed on this spectrum.

But what if the State and the Market are the sources of our unsustainability?What if they are intrinsically incapable of fixing what’s broken?

The roadblock here is adherents to one camp or the other are emotionally attached to their ideological choice, to the point that these ideological attachments have a quasi-religious character.

March 13, 2017

The moral bankruptcy of the liberal class, which despite the staggering election defeat is unable or unwilling to engage in genuine self-reflection, ensures the steady march toward an American fascism.
- 2017/03/05